


💦💦💦💦

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, F/M, Short and Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 04:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18024998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: In which Ben accidentally implies that he gets his cardio from having sex on national television.





	💦💦💦💦

**Author's Note:**

> Accidental self prompt because [I remembered that time that Henry Cavill implied that he got his cardio by having sex](https://insomniarama.tumblr.com/post/126655134454/margorobbe-zaziebeatz-henry-cavill-implying).
> 
> Thanks to Jeeno2, who gave this a gander.

Rey gets out of the shower at the gym to see that her phone has lost about half of its battery life from Twitter push notifications.   _On no, what happened?_

It’s not the first time that this has happened.  Ben’s gone on TV before and said something a little too bluntly and suddenly there are people all over her notifications page freaking out about it for about four days—or at least until they have found something new to freak out about.

_OMG @scavangerey is so lucky_

_That Cardio Routine Tho @scavengerey_ 😉👌🍆💦

_I wish that I had someone with less than 10% body fat who used me as his cardio routine.  @scavengerey how’d you do it?_

Rey stares at that last one for a full thirty seconds before deciding to block them.   _Use me for his cardio routine.  Nope._ Twitter got a lot better for her when she started blocking people who didn’t think before they spoke.  

But what the actual hell?

Ben doesn’t have a Twitter.  Or rather, he doesn’t have a Twitter anymore.  It made him too angry when people were both dumb and wrong, and talked about it a lot, and when he’d thrown his phone out a window, he and Rey had decided it would be for the best if he lived in ignorance about what went on on that particular hellhole of a site.  But Rey’s still on the rise. Her documentary had gotten picked up on Netflix and she was even turning into a hashtag—how to #scavengerey your way into a low cost, high quality life. And while her thrifting Instagram had been popular for years, it was only in the past year or so that her Twitter had taken off.

Around the time that Ben had been nominated for an Oscar, and she’d found a dress to wear on the red carpet for thirty-five bucks.  

She’d learned to block the haters fast—the sexists who thought she was after him for his money, who thought she didn’t deserve him, who thought she wasn’t good enough for him.  She didn’t need them in her life at all. But there were definitely the followers who were after her for bits and pieces of Ben’s life because he’d gotten off social media. Which fundamentally she doesn’t have _that_ much of a problem with, she supposes.  Except on days like today.

“What did you do?” she mutters as she scrolls through _endless_ notifications in the app.  Most of them contain an eggplant emoji or five; some of them have some well placed peaches.  There are fingers that are pointing towards OK hands which has her simultaneously rolling her eyes and also cringing.  As if she’d needed more proof that Ben had _definitely_ said something about their sex life.

Ben’s private.  More private than Rey.  Guarded—it comes from being raised in the industry, from never having had an ounce of privacy growing up because of his parents and uncle.  He would never say anything about their sex life publicly. Never. Unless someone had got the jump on him?

She finds a link to a Tumblr gifset--four square gifs of Ben sitting opposite Dopheld Mitaka--that’s right, he’d had that interview today to promo _What Girl_.

 _What do you do for cardio?_ Mitaka asks him and Ben just starts shaking his head.

 _No cardio,_ says the little caption under his face.   _I……………………………run._

 _That’s a safe answer,_ Mitaka says from offscreen. Ben’s face is slowly getting redder, his lips getting thinner, and the next gif contains a _*Audience whistles and laughs*_ descriptor.

She blinks at the gifset.  She stares at Ben’s face.

She knows when he’s a deer in the headlights.  It’s the same exact face he makes when she’s caught him with his pants down.  (Metaphorically. When she’s caught him with his pants down—literally—there’s usually an arrogant smirk on his face.)  The _oh god what do I say next to not make this worse._ Because he’s getting better at recognizing when he can—perhaps—prevent himself from making it worse by keeping his foot out of his mouth.  He has about a thirty percent success rate, which is infinitely better than it used to be.

 _What do I do to get my heart rate up?_ he probably thought, before thinking of the jogs he never goes on, the trips to the swimming pool he never joins Rey on, unless he’s planning on lying back and watching her swim and getting a dazed look on his face when she pulls herself, dripping, out of the water. She can practically see the cogs in his brain turning as every line of his face screams, _I don’t do cardio.  Rey gets my heart rate up._

And that was it.

She sighs, turns off her Twitter notifications and texts Ben.

 

**Rey:** I hear that you do a lot of cardio these days.

He types for about nine years.

 

**Ben:** I know it was a dumb thing to say.  I know. I know and I’m really sorry.  I didn’t think I couldn’t think and suddenly it was like everyone in that room could read my mind.  And you know I hate cardio. I hate it. But if I start saying that, then I’ll have to explain /why/ and we both know that I’d come up with a worse answer to *that* than what actually happened.

It was the truth.  Rey had thought he was joking when he’d finally told her about Uncle Luke and the watermelons.  

 

**Ben:** You know I love you.  And I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to humiliate you like that.

Rey’s reading as she walks.  She’s leaving the locker room and heading out to her car, her eyes on her phone screen as she reads.

 

**Rey:** I’m not mad at you.  
  
**Ben:** You’re not?  
  
**Rey:** It’s kind of funny.  
  
**Rey:** But you might owe me because of what I have to put up with in my notifications right now.  
  
**Ben:** Oh god I didn’t think about that.  
  
**Rey:** So many eggplant emojis.  
  
**Ben:** I owe you.  Whatever you want.

 

-

 

He probably meant a sexual favor.  

In fact, she’s sure he did.  

That’s how they tend to pay each other back for misdeeds—sexual favors.  Never actually _forced_ more like a _hey I appreciate you a lot and I’m sorry that might not have happened the way it should._ If ever one of them isn’t in the mood for that, pizza would suffice.  Or just like...cuddling. But it usually is sex. Sex usually works just fine.

“This is a punishment,” Ben mutters as he ties his shoelaces.

“No,” Rey says, kissing his cheek and, for good measure, squeezing his ass.  (It’s muscular. She loves squeezing his ass. It’s both squishy and solid.) “But I do worry about your heart health.  You probably could stand to add some cardio to your routine.”

“I get plenty of cardio,” he complains.  “I do actually get cardio. It’s part of my training regimen.”

“Twenty minutes on the elliptical.”

“The rowing machine,” he corrects her and Rey pauses.  She knows only bits and pieces about the sorts of physical demands his roles place on him, but it had never occurred to her that he’d use a rowing machine instead of a treadmill.  But it makes so much sense.

“Fine.  Twenty minutes on the rowing machine is not the same as jogging through the sunshine.”

“I’m a slow runner.”

“You have long legs, you’ll be fine.  And if you’re too slow, you can stare at my ass the whole time and that can be motivational for you.”

She kisses him again.  “See? Not much of a punishment.”

 

-

 

Rey jogs about three times a week.  She goes to a zumba class twice a week.  She’s always moving. She does strength training too, when she wants to, but ever since she was a kid, she knew she had to be able to outrun people.  (Old habits and thought processes die hard sometimes. Sure, she doesn’t have to run for her life. She thinks Ben would probably take joy in killing anyone who would make that happen.  But still. She should be able to. Just in case.) So jogging. Sprinting, sometimes, when she’s at the park and there’s a really cute dog that wants to race her.

Ben hadn’t lied.  He’s terrible at cardio.  He’s slow, he complains and after ten minutes he starts huffing.  He sweats a lot, too, which she knows—she’s met him at the gym before towards the end of one of his workouts—and it’s not like...attractive sexy sweating.  There are dark pit stains under his arms, the grey of his t-shirt going so dark it’s closer to black than white. And his hair is so long that it keeps getting in his eyes and he keeps having to sort of half-brush it past his ears.

Rey takes pity on him after the first mile and a half.  They stop at a water fountain and she takes the spare hairband off her wrist while he drinks for like two minutes flat.  “Are we done?” he asks her when they don’t immediately start running again the second he finishes.

“No,” Rey says and she stands on her tiptoes and pulls his hair back into an almost half-ponytail.  It looks ridiculous, but it’ll keep his hair out of his face. “We’ve got another two miles.”

He has the dignity not to whine about it, but he doesn’t run next to her now.  He’s a few feet behind and she’s a hundred percent sure he’s staring at her ass as they go.   _Carrot emoji,_ she thinks, and grins.

They reach the car and the sun is beating down on them.  Ben’s so sweaty it’s sort of ridiculous, and Rey takes her phone out of her purse and stands next to him.  “Selfie for Instagram,” she tells him, and he blinks at her, and acquiesces. It’s in this moment that he realizes that the jog was only partial payment.

He smiles into the picture, pulling Rey against his sweaty chest as she beams up at the camera.  

He kisses her neck as she begins to type out the caption.  “Now do I get to make it up to you in a fun way?” he asks her.

“Yes,” Rey says with a smile.

 _Apparently Ben doesn’t get enough cardio, so I dragged his ass on a jog._ She pauses for a moment as she slides into the passenger side of Ben’s car.  Then, she adds, _He wishes he had my stamina 💦💦💦💦,_ hits post, and turns off her push notifications again.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! You can find me on [pillowfort](http://pillowfort.io/crossingwinter) and [twitter](http://twitter.com/crossing_winter)! iOS layout tutorial can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6434845/chapters/14729722).


End file.
